The exhibition “Conjuring up Sculpture” is a meeting of two artists – Dorota Buczkowska and Michał Smandek – who have for years followed each other’s careers with great interest, noticing a similarity between visual forms used by them. Both of them, creating spatial situations, use installation and photography. The artists achieve similar effects with the use of different means and goal pursuit.
The works made by Dorota Buczkowska result from her sensual exploration of matter, contact with it and trying to understand where form is hidden in a given material, which the artist is supposed to bring out. Michał Smandek searches for forms and situations which he provokes using physical forces and potential of the place, in which he finds himself in a given moment.
A common feature of the works of art that “meet” at the exhibition is shaping, inducing and conjuring up sculpture, which potential existence is sensed by artists in a given place.
Dorota Buczkowska is a graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture and Restoration of Works of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Gender Studies at the Warsaw University, and the Villa Arson Art School of Nice. Creatively, she is involved in painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography, and drawing. She taps into human behavior hidden in subconsciousness. She takes up motifs concerning integrating trauma and taming the outcasts (e.g. such projects as “A Year in the Sanatorium” and “Health Resort”). Formally, her works can be distinguished by perfect painting and graphic art technique. Buczkowska’s art is characterized by her unique operating of the radiance of colors.
She participated in many group exhibitions (Departure – Curator’s Exhibition of Bielsko Biała Autumn, BWA Bielsko-Biała (2016), How to Survive an Emotional Storm on the Water, within “Live Archives,” Photographic Archeology Foundation (2016), On Generation and Corruption, BWA Katowice (2014), I Hardly Ever…., Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2012), Lorne Sculpture 2011 Biennale of Contemporary Sculpture, Australia (2011), Journey around the skull, CCA Ujazdowski Zamek (2011), Factory, Museum of Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, Israel (2009), Dew point, Raster Gallery, Warsaw (2006). She presented her works of art during numerous solo exhibitions, including Health Resort, Królikarnia (2016), Emulsion, Photographic Archeology, Warsaw (PL) (2015), Queendom, BWA Gallery, Tarnów (2014), The expérience of présence, Platan Gallery, Budapest (Hu) (2014), Apnea, Dorota Buczkowska, TRAFO, Szczecin (PL) (2014), Tickling the Palate, Starter Gallery (2013), Not All Parts are Complete, Polish Institute in Dusseldorf, Germany (2013), Nicht alle Teile sind vollständig, Skulpturenmuseum, Marl (DE) (2012), CCA Plain bile would come from the liver, Ujazdowski Zamek (PL) (2012), Under The Bridge, Liverpool Biennale (GB) (2009), Transitional Conditions, CRAC Sete, France (2008), Circulations, Zak Gallery, Berlin (2007). She lives and works in Warsaw.
Michał Smandek is a visual artist, sculptor, installation artist, and photographer. He is interested in interactions between man and nature, and modifications of space. During his travels, he looks for inaccessible places, which become a background for land art activities. He is involved in process art and research as art. His works are based on acute observation, noticing processes that are hardly noticeable, conscious choice and understanding of the power of gestures. The artist checks the content of the definition of art and scope of its recognizability, blurring the boundary between making and appropriating existing situations as finished artworks. Michał Smandek is a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Marshal of Silesian Voivodeship, laureate of the section ShowOff of the Month of Photography in Cracow. He carried out projects during the 1st International Land Art Symposium in India and the 3rd Land Art Biennale in Mongolia LAM 360°. He presented his works at the BWA of Katowice (e.g. Line and Chaos in 2017, Fatigue in 2012), the BWA of Tarnów (The Vanishing Skill to Relax in 2014), the BWA in Nowy Sącz (Teleport Process, Modern Tourists in 2013), the Silesian Museum (Conservation Activities – “Wujek” Coalmine in 2017), during Survival festivals in Wrocław and ArtBoom in Cracow, in the Starter Gallery of Warsaw (Drawings in 2016 r.), Rodríguez Gallery of Poznań (Remembering in 2016), Maison 44 Gallery in w Basel, and the National Art Gallery w Ulaanbaatar. He works in the Katowice Academy of Fine Arts and cooperates with the Rodríguez Gallery of Poznań.
Curator of the Exhibition: Jagna Domżalska
Coordination of the Exhibition: Karolina Pikosz
Open 9.02.2018, 6pm
End 11.03.2018
